May all your carrots grow long and straight: a week with Joel Salatin

May all your carrots grow long and straight, may the foxes be struck blind by your chickens, may your customers love cooking your food in their kitchens, may the rains be gentle on your pastures, may your fields grow with soil, may your earthworms dance with celebration, may the wind be always at your back, your children rise up and call you blessed, and may we all leave a better world than we found…

With such a blessing did Joel Salatin close each workshop and talk he gave while in Australia on his recent RegenAG tour. And I could feel the crowd accepting that blessing with gratitude, each and every time.

We were lucky enough to run 3 public talks and 2 workshops with Joel while he was in Australia this year and I’m afraid he’s changed our outlook on agriculture, land use, land stewardship and the funkiness of farming forever.

Joel Salatin, Nick Ritar and Col Seis at 'Winona', checking out the birthplace of pasture cropping

Like many people that attended a workshop or a talk with Joel somewhere between Bendigo and Cairns, we’re still unpacking the momentous amount of information we received, and we’ll continue to do so over the holiday break. But in the meantime, here’s a roundup of radio interviews and articles relating to Joel’s tour, which provide a bit of backstory on his approach to ‘beyond organic’ farming and the need for real food, right now:

If you want the one-sentence version, here is mine: Joel Salatin is a farmer, witer and innovator from Virginia USA who, along with his extended family, has chosen to approach farming and the production of ethical, nutritionally-dense food in a way that provides right livelihoods, strengthens the surrounding community and regenerates the land while allowing for enormous creativity, innovation and sustainability within that farming practice.

It is very hard not to gush about this bloke. I’ll do my best. But we, along with 3 other farming families, had been planning this RegenAG tour for 9 months and we were understandably tremulous about whether reality would measure up to the momentum we’d been trying to build around Joel’s arrival. We neeedn’t have worried.

Joel Salatin in workshop mode

What is so unique about Joel’s farming approach is that it assumes that inter-personal trust, hard work, innovation, stacking functions, good system design and mimicking nature will win the day over corporate interests, chemical fertilisers and industrial food systems. Which is a very nice assumption, and one that many ex-urbanite, wanna-be first generation farmers (like us) share.

But the assuming and the doing are two very different things. Poke beneath the surface of nearly any Australian family farm and you’ll find one (or more) off-farm incomes that prop up that farming system. It’s a widely held belief that to make a living out of farming, someone in the family has to work off-farm to make sure that farm remains ‘viable’. Which is a great irony of most first-world family farming, but there you go.

At PolyFace Farms, however, the Salatins are actively living the dream we all have: a family of three generations that farms their land full-time, each with complimentary on-farm enterprises, and makes a very healthy profit in the process. Such a scenario, in our experience, was quite unheard of. Up until now, anyways.

The most powerful thing we took away from spending 8 days with Joel was that farming can be the most inspiring and creative livelihood there is, and that you can, if you are bold and brave, expect to make a real living out of your ethical farming enterprise. Which is what i’d always wanted to hear someone say, even if i wouldn’t have believed them before now.

Polyface farm’s systems are kind of like Permaculture on steroids. Everything is complimentary, each farmed species follows, intersects and supports the growth of another, every structure is used for multiple things, nothing is wasted. It’s enough to make you snap shut your laptop and head off to start planning an integrated chook-mobile / pasture cropping / holistic management beef system immediately. Or maybe just a truly awesome kitchen garden.

Here’s a screaming tour of the highlights of our 8 days with Joel:

On the 23rd November, Joel landed in Sydney and, following a quick whip around the harbor with Nick, immediately addressed a sold-out crowd of 400 at his Sydney public talk. We’ll have it up online soon here at the Milkwood blog but I’ve not seen so many urbanites leave an auditorium with such a fire in their bellies and farming on their mind. Great fun.

Panorama of our 'Local Farms & Community' course at Mulloon Creek

The next day saw us all off to Canberra for another public talk, this time with 300 attending and filmed by ABC’s Big Ideas. A preview of forthcoming doco Growing the Growers provided some unique insights. And then the first course. 100 farmers, feeders and thinkers crammed into our venue (the Mulloon Creek barn) for two days covering Polyface techniques, addressing everything from animal systems through to direct marketing to succession planning. A-maz-ing. Not a dry eye in the house during the part about creating a farm that children with treasure, and many folks giving heartfelt thanks at the end.

Allsun Farm in spring

For Joel’s day off we went to Allsun Farm at Gundaroo to visit his old friends Joyce and Michael. We’d been to Allsun Farm (an amazingly productive organic microfarm using Eliot Colman and Polyface techniques) previously but it was great to see it singing at the end of spring, with chooks and veggies clucking and blooming every which way. Then, we put Joel on a plane towards the Victorian and Queensland legs of his tour, drove back to Milkwood, and collapsed.

By the time we picked Joel up a week and a half later in Mudgee we were partly recovered, except for all the rain. So much rain. Too much, even. We had to make the difficult decision to move the Milkwood Farm course with Joel into town – we figured there was no point having this amazing guy in our woolshed if flooding prevented anyone else getting to our farm. So we made the call and moved the course to a big shed in Mudgee town. Sigh.

Fortunately we had Costa to perk us up. Costa introduced Joel to the audience at the Mudgee public talk and stayed on to do the course. Nick describes Costa as the fulfillment of the un-requited promise of commercial air fresheners… because unlike air fresheners, the minute Costa’s in the room, things do actually just get better, brighter and more pleasant.

Joel Salatin and Peter Andrews, locked in conversation

Following the 100-strong Mudgee course (from which we will be publishing a series of mp3s shortly) and a dinner with Peter Andrews in which Peter and Joel swapped observations on the hydrology of our landscape, we took Joel along to Col Seis’s farm to have a look at some pasture cropping.

Col Seis, Nick Ritar and Joel Salatin having a look at groundcover in a pasture-cropped field

Col Seis and Joel Salatin are two of a kind: creative innovators who have the ability to walk with the land and its needs, and create abundant systems in the face of opposition and assumptions of conventional agriculture. They nearly talked each other’s heads off. They improved each other’s systems thinking on the spot. And they each went away with a large amount of new ideas. It was a treasure to witness.

Following a quick lunch at Ormiston’s Farmers Pantry we finally got Joel onto Milkwood soil, for his final night in Australia.

Nick showing Joel our geodesic chookdome.

We dragged Joel around Milkwood and in his 20 minute tour he managed to suggest at least 4 really good ideas about how to do things more efficiently. We interviewed him about advice for first-generation farmers, fed him some of our lamb, local yabbies and the best ice cream we could find, and then put him to bed in our guest caravan.

And the next morning we let him go home, back to his farm and his family so very far away.

The inspiration lingers, however. Now it’s up to us to use the knowledge we’ve gained to make Milkwood into something that Ashar will treasure – because i don’t mind the idea of my child rising up and calling me blessed. Or my carrots growing long and straight.

Ashar in the top paddock: may he rise up and call me blessed, if i can get this regenerative farming thing right...

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29 COMMENTS

Brilliant summary Kirsten! Joel has become a bit of a hero of mine in recent years, and though I didn’t manage to get to one of his talks or workshops, I’ve been following his tour with interest. Good on you, and the rest of the RegenAg gang for getting him out!

fantastic post Kirsten – and I’m smarting (even moreso now!) that I wasn’t able to attend any of Joel’s talks but I’m nodding my head down here in agreement and empathy with all that you’ve posted

ps today our family farm is officially rejoining the bega cheese co-operative…. given that there are currently no dairies or large scale farms in my region (and certainly none supplying the co-op) that are operating under the guidance of permaculture principles I’m facing an enormous personal challenge……

Thank you so much for posting the info on Joel’s visit. I have been waiting and checking every day (sometimes every hour for your post). I was going to visit your farm to attend the work shop but the timing and then the wet weather kept me away. A regret i will have to live with. Since I have found your blog (two weeks ago) I have read almost all of it. Keep up the good work and I hope to meet you guys and Joel Salatin some time in the near future.

After completing the 2 week PDC at Milkwood with Rowe Morrow & Nick and now seeing Joel in Sydney; Thomas & I will move to our little 28 acre farm with a belly full of fire and some wonderful knowledge that I look forward to turning into skills..
Thanks
Brad

I really enjoyed Joel’s ‘The politics of food” with his breakdown for the predominance of industrial food practices, very dense, very informative, lateral, humorous and great link making through history.

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Fantastic article Kirsten, and thanks so much for bringing Joel out. I was lucky enough to attend the Bungendoor workshop and it was an experience I will never forget. Since then I have read Joel’s “the sheer ecstasy of being a lunatic farmer” which took my learning to a whole new level. Joel is an incredible visionary who is inspiring people the world over. Keep up the great work guys, can’t wait to do some more course with Milkwood

[…] We considered various techniques, and in retrospect perhaps should have borrowed some pigs and attempted to seal the dam via a method called glaying – a technique which uses a large number of animals, penned into a dry dam for a short period of time, to seal the dam by smushing their manure into the surface of the inner dam wall so effectively that it seals the deal. Apparently works great with pigs, even on pure shale, according to Joel Salatin. […]

Hi Kirsten, I just stumbled on your website today. I retired from medicine truly disillusioned by my profession’s blatant denial of nutritional health, despite glaring evidence to the contrary. I started farming two years ago determined to learn the principles of sustainable farming practices and regenerative pasture management. I knew the answer lay in the soil, and how we manage it. Joel Salatin, Colin Seis, Peter Andrews, Christine Jones, Allan Savory are all members of my “favourite file” As a person new to farming, its hard to understand why anyone would want to farm any other way. I’m trying to imagine a seminar with 3 out of my big five. Probably just as we’ll I missed it. Probably would have kept me awake for a week. Although only in my infancy when it comes to regenrative practices, already I am witnessing amazing improvements on our farm. Look forward to following your blog and learning more.

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